Headlines

NJ

GOP’s new inspiration: George W. Bush?

President Bush’s success with minority voters stemmed in large part from his two campaigns for governor in Texas. He liked to say, “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.” Unlike Romney, who invested little in Spanish-language advertising until the final two months of his campaign, Bush began reaching out to Hispanics early; he outspent his Democratic opponents in Spanish media in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns…

Bush is even a presence in the current high-stakes budget negotiations between Capitol Hill and the White House. Although the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration for the wealthiest Americans have been a major sticking point, the tax policy it put in place for the vast majority of households has bipartisan support.

“When you consider that the Obama administration is talking about not whether to extend the Bush tax cuts but how much of them to extend, you see that Bush is still setting the agenda,” said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, who worked on Bush’s 2004 campaign.

While a possible presidential bid by Jeb Bush heightens the impact of his brother’s evolving legacy, it’s not unusual for a president’s image to change after leaving office.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

Problem is the media has made it impossible to be friendly to Hispanic Americans while getting tough with immigration. Their goal is to make Hispanics as monolithic as blacks. It won’t totally work as many Hispanics are devout Catholics and won’t stand for infanticide, but if they can hold a steady majority and goose the numbers, same result.

There they go again. The tax cuts were for everybody.
SoulGlo on December 26, 2012 at 10:21 PM

I really hope in 2016 we have a candidate that can actually articulate why using certain sets of people as an ATM because you want more government spending and can out vote them is a morally hazardous situation. I struggle to understand the difference between that and the gun and ski mask approach.

Bush was an LBJ Democrat, plain and simple, and his refusal to enforce the immigration laws has destroyed the country, while his spending and government growth agenda created the club Ogabe is using to beat Americans to death.

Jeb Bush… No, No, No. And No. I was a big Dubya fan, but how did he not see the meltdown coming? And he gave us Barry the Narcissist.

As for Dubya and minorities, that really was one of his high points. He could definitely do the whole Kemp bleeding heart conservative thing very well. That is one huge point to Rubio… It works even better with Rubio because he has a working class immigrant background. Too bad that he is incredibly fluffy.

There are a lot of things Bush isn’t given a fair shake on. People like to criticize his expansion of medicare but they don’t look at it in the context of the comprehensive Social Security reforms he proposed. Those proposals are looking pretty good now if we had moved on them but neither party would touch Social Security. They only acted on parts that increased benefits and wouldn’t touch anything that made changes in the existing benefits.

For the love of God, NO. The man destroyed the GOP’s standing with the younger generation, the one that just returned Obama to office. There are better examples of conservatism than a big government spendthrift who created a whole new Medicare entitlement program and started two wars that eventually became unpopular, particularly with younger voters.

You can argue that he managed to cut heavily into the Democrats’ advantage with Latino voters, and that’s true enough, but the rest of the GOP managed to reverse that almost immediately.

There are a lot of things Bush isn’t given a fair shake on. People like to criticize his expansion of medicare but they don’t look at it in the context of the comprehensive Social Security reforms he proposed. Those proposals are looking pretty good now if we had moved on them but neither party would touch Social Security. They only acted on parts that increased benefits and wouldn’t touch anything that made changes in the existing benefits.

crosspatch on December 26, 2012 at 11:38 PM

One of the issues with Bush’s Social Security reforms were that they weren’t set up correctly. Rove didn’t want Bush to talk about them during the campaign and so they didn’t get passed. Bush got a second term that meant nothing.. What we’re hoping Barry the Messiah gets. And yes.. Bush’s proposals were good. Simpson-Bowles co-opted them.

Lots of armchair QBs here. I’ll just say George Bush was probably the greatest Commander in Chief I’d served under. He was not perfect domestically, but he presided over a pretty damn hot economy until 06 with the change in Congress and the housing debacle.

I wish he would have been stronger with the borders. But who’s been tough?

I wish he’d defended his administration more. But who in our recent history besides Sarah Palin has had to suffer the constant and vicious attacks and criticisms of our News and Popular Culture media more than George Bush? How he weathered those years is beyond me.

And I frankly do not know who could have brought us back from 9-11 better.

Back in 2002, I met David Schippers, who was counsel to the House committee on impeachment in 1998, and I started to ask him whether, in retrospect, it wasn’t better that the impeachment had failed in the Senate. Without waiting for me to finish my question, he said Gore would have been president now (in 2002). “God was looking after us.”